By Jan Barry

Colleges can be learning-by-doing communities, as well as collections of professorial lecturing classrooms. Students get a chance to try something out, as part of student government, clubs and course projects. This spring, students at Ramapo College tackled environmental issues in a variety of hands-on ways. Several of these efforts at the state college in Mahwah, NJ and elsewhere were reported by student-reporters in my Environmental Writing class.

“In the Fall 2017 semester, a senior communications capstone group of four highly motivated and passionate students set out to create and execute a year-long project to raise awareness and educate the student body, faculty and staff at Ramapo College of New Jersey of the environmental and sustainable initiatives going on at the college,” wrote Chris Bernstein, a graduating senior.

Describing the learning process, he added: “I had no idea what kind of sustainable initiatives were going on within the school. I had seen the solar panels begin to be put up in the commuter parking lot, but that’s about it. As my group and I set out to begin this campaign, I began to learn just how much was going on in the efforts to label Ramapo as a zero-waste campus and to educate students, faculty and staff on how to live sustainably.”

Among the things he learned is that a number of other students were active in a campus group called Ramapo Green that organized environmental awareness events and promoted sustainability ideas via various media.

“Ysabella Langdon, a senior Visual Communication Design major, is making strides in sustainability as the Community Manager of both Ramapo Green and Brooklyn-based Package Free Shop,” observed a profile story by a fellow student environmental-activist, Lily Makhlouf. “Ysabella manages media for Ramapo Green and 1STEP, Ramapo College’s student environmental club. In the Spring of 2017, she co-founded Ramapo’s Garden Club, seeing a need for more student involvement in the campus gardens.  When she’s not busy organizing and planning for Ramapo Green, she’s managing communication with customers at Package Free, in addition to running her own business…. Redo Lab, a design innovation lab that aims to invent and redesign products, [such as] compostable heating and cooling packs that are handmade using herbs and other natural ingredients.”

Movement to reduce plastic waste

Among her many contributions to campus public education on environmental issues, Langdon wrote how-to articles on maintaining a “Zero Waste Kitchen at College” and “Reducing Plastic Waste” through doing bulk shopping with non-plastic containers.

Fellow senior Kathryn Brennan wrote about her own efforts to say “Goodbye Plastic!”

“Plastic is used in so many day to day products that it can be hard to live a green life without using some type of plastic,” Brennan noted. “I have personally made it my mission this year to live a plastic-free life. I quickly learned how hard it is to live a plastic-free life. I realized I started my day with a toothbrush made of plastic. Then I realized my deodorant is in a plastic container. Throughout the rest of my day I noticed that a majority of the products in my life are plastic. I have slowly but surely began living a plastic-free life. Here are some tips if you would like to start living a plastic-free life….

“For about a week I kept track of everything plastic that I used. By keeping track and documenting the plastic I used I was able to start a plan to be plastic free. I started my plan by figuring out how I was going to replace my plastic products….”

Another group of students focused on reducing the use of Styrofoam packaging on campus. “In a room filled with student government leaders and student environmental leaders, a bill was passed unanimously by the Ramapo College Student Government Association (SGA) on January 29 to ban the purchase and usage of Styrofoam products within its organization,” Lily Makhlouf reported on our class website, Ramapo Lookout. “The success of Bill 2018-01, introduced and proposed by SGA Senator Ryan Greff, signals a great step forward for Ramapo College’s ongoing efforts to properly regulate and reduce campus waste.”

She added the perspective of the bill’s student sponsor: “When asked why he chose to push forward with this bill, Greff, a finance major, stated, ‘I was inspired to regulate the use of the material due to the long term economic impacts from the disposal of Styrofoam. This could eventually cause the cost of living to be higher for people, including graduated Ramapo College students. Furthermore, Styrofoam presents a big danger to plant and animal life. I spent a great deal of time in the outdoors as an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America. As a result, I grew to appreciate nature. Therefore, I thought it was best to stop SGA’s monetary transactions and uses that would go to supporting the Styrofoam industry.’ ”

Reassessing focus of environmental impact statements

Meanwhile, a group of seniors majoring in environmental studies set out to learn how to prepare an environmental impact statement to shed light on a long-delayed, major industrial waste cleanup in the nearby community of Pompton Lakes. The latest in a series of annual “capstone” projects for environmental studies seniors, professors guide the group in doing research and writing a report that the students prepare, often working in teams. Much of the work is done outside the classroom.

Students were challenged by professors and visiting speakers to reevaluate the way things have been done and suggest potential improvements. Here’s a thought-provoking assessment that one of the seniors, Andrew Herrera, came up with.

“Environmental impact statements have developed an almost codified rubric of different impacts that are supposed to be researched before a development can begin. Different environmental assessments may include additional topics particular to their project, but this group of impacts generally applies to most statements. These impacts, or indicators, typically include physical, ecological, and socioeconomic effects such as air quality, biodiversity, and local economy. My indicator, however, looked at organizational impacts, which is not a widely recognized one,” Herrera wrote.

“Although I began this assessment unsure of exactly what significance my indicator held for the overall state of the community of Pompton Lakes, my findings have taught me how important the ‘organizational’ impacts of any project can be. For one, I have learned that the citizens of Pompton Lakes are severely disadvantaged by a lack of communication and support from the EPA and the DEP. DuPont and its spinoff, Chemours, which is now overseeing the site, have consistently proven to be opposed to open and timely correspondence with the community about their factory’s contamination of the water in Pompton Lakes…”

“Organizational impacts should be included in every environmental impact statement,” Herrera concluded from his research. “They figure into the most critical aspects of development: social harmony, civic engagement, and honest government. As such, organizational impacts hold larger implications for a community than what is dictated by a typical environmental assessment. They can determine whether the residents even have the proper mechanisms in place to ensure active public participation in determining the fate of their community.”

These and many other encouraging accounts of what students on one campus learned about how to address environmental issues are presented in the 2018 edition of Environmental Writing posted on the Ramapo Lookout website, at http://ramapolookout.blogspot.com/2018/